


Look Yourself in the Face

by Bluandorange



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Evil, Captain Hydra, Character Study, Evil!Steve, Gen, Self-Hatred, Steve Vs Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 17:08:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6433027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluandorange/pseuds/Bluandorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers, against the better judgement of his peers, is going in to talk to his 'evil' alternate universe counter part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look Yourself in the Face

 

 

Steve steps into holding cell, leaving Nat at the controls and Sam watching through the one-way glass. He knows they’ll be listening to this and, yeah, a part of him wishes he’d talked them into giving him and their _guest_  some privacy, but Sam was already against Steve going in and Natasha was just this side of nervous, too, which, coming from Natasha, meant that what Steve was about to do was probably dangerous, stupid, or a combination of the two. 

Too bad for them, stupidly dangerous was one of his favorite pass-times. 

And he really had to do this. He did, or he’d regret it. This was a once in a life time chance and even if it hurt, he was going to face it. He couldn’t do anything less. 

And, like most pain, Steve knew a part of him was going to enjoy this. 

The man in the cell was shackled to his chair, restraints around his forearms, legs and torso. Restraints meant for holding a super soldier. Restraints that had been reinforced specifically to hold this super soldier because he was The Super Soldier. The original. Steve Rogers. 

Steve stared at himself, eyes moving over every line of him, taking in all the ways he was unfamiliar and all the ways he was _just_  the same. 

The Steve being held in the cell wasn’t a clone or a projection or a gollum–-he was from another reality with slightly different events. He’d been captured soon after crossing over to this reality, his legion of HYDRA/SHIELD soldiers taken in as well. 

He kept changing his answer, when they asked who he worked for. Sometimes HYDRA, sometimes SHIELD. One thing for certain, he answered to Alexander Pierce. In his world, HYDRA and SHIELD had made some harmonious union, the wheels of which were of course greased by a successful launch of Project Insight. That world was theirs to rule, and they were clearly egotistical enough to believe they deserved to rule other worlds, too. 

Steve’s teeth are beginning to ache, his jaw is clenched so hard. The other Steve–-’The General’ by way of introduction but ‘Captain HYDRA’ to most of the Avengers-–continues to smirk, his body loose and relaxed inside the bulky restraints. He’d been wearing that smirk ever since the end of his second interrogation. This amused, smug half tilt to his lips, like he knew despite all the trappings of being a prisoner, he was gonna be just fine. Like he thought they were all a fucking joke. A smug kid caught breaking windows by people he knew didn’t have the authority to punish him in any way that _mattered_. Any way that _scared_  him.

“Captain,” says the smug shit. 

“Rogers,” Steve replies. 

His double fakes a look of awe. “You went right for it. I thought you’d dance around the elephant in the room for at least a little while.” He settles in his chair and raises his chin as Steve sits across from him. “None of your friends want to believe we’re the same person.”

“Oh, we are,” Steve says. “That’s what I came to talk about.”

His double breathes out a laugh and cocks an eyebrow, “you here to figure out where our paths diverged? Hadn’t yer lil spy broad briefed you on that already? Or did they let you watch?” he motions to the wall that’s actually the viewing window, but Steve doesn’t look away. 

“I came to call you on your shit.” 

The other Steve outright snorts. “This should be good.”

“Yer a disappointment.”

A restrained chuckle as he shifts in his seat. “Okay.” 

“It’s more than that,” Steve says, continuing like the man across from him hadn’t responded at all. “Yer weak and cowardly and honestly? Fucking pathetic.”

“Wow,” says the man, the smirk still on his face. “That. That really hurts my feelings.” 

“You took the easy way out, Steve.”

There’s, for just a moment, a stillness to the man, a moment where he’s close to actually listening, before he huffs another laugh. 

“Yeah, laugh it off,” Steve says. “Laugh off the fact yer the pathetic sack of shit we both know you were destined to be. I hope it feels good, knowing you lied to yourself for so damn long before you finally gave in to the selfish, entitled little asswipe you worked so hard to hide. From Mom. From Bucky. From Peggy.”

“Buck and I are just fine,” the man says, but he’s listening, because there’s steel in his gaze and a tightness to his jaw that means the blows are hitting. 

“No, yer fine with what’s left of him. If he was the guy we knew from Brooklyn? He’d spit on yer shoe rather than look atcha.”

The man is shaking his head but Steve goes on.

“You think just because I didn’t make the same piss poor choices you did, I’m some goody-two-shoes who doesn’t understand why bad people do bad things. I understand pain. I understand craving power when you don’t have any. I understand frustration. I also understand that doing what you did? Was the weakest moment of your whole fucking life.”

“Shut up.”

“When Erskine sat us down–”

“Shut up! I swear to Christ, don’t you bring him up.”

“–and told us why we were being picked–”

The man looks away from him for the first time, trying to find focus somewhere else in the room.

“–we both thought the same godddamn thing; I am not a good man. He asked us to promise him we would stay good and we _didn’t_. Neither of us. So don’t fucking sit there and act like I couldn’t have made the same choices as you. I could, and I didn’t, because I refuse to be a selfish sack of trash!”

“Yeah! And how’s that working out, huh?” The man is showing teeth now, his neck red, his hands in fists. “How happy are you with that?”

Steve pauses, which makes the man sit back and nod, saying “That’s what I thought.”

“You don’t get it, its not about being happy. Its about not having the strength to reach it without degrading into an entitled child. You were weak. Pathetic. Unable to hack it in the real world even when you finally had everything. You gave up.”

“I didn’t.” 

“You did.”

“On _what_?”

Steve leans in closer. “On becoming someone better than we are.”

“ _You_ don’t get it; there’s no changing what we are! And why would we? We’re better than everyone else, we always have been, why the fuck do you sit around pretending you aren’t better?”

“And be what, a bully?”

The man leans against his restraints, eyes sharp and cruel. “You know, deep down, you envied them. You wanted what they had. We wanted what they had. The power, the confidence. The presence that let them do whatever they wanted without anyone getting in their way–”

“And then we got in their way.”

The man stops, knocked off center by having the narrative he was weaving stolen from him.

“We proved that their power was bullshit. Their confidence was unearned. They couldn’t do whatever they wanted without having to deal with us, and yeah, we were a whole lot of nothin’, but we still showed up to those fights, ready to lose. Because fuck those assholes. They don’t deserve what they got and neither do you. But you keep tellin’ yerself you deserve your shitpile. I mean we both know that, deep down, you know the same things those bullies in Brooklyn did; you don’t deserve it, you never did, and yer nothing but a cranky baby who’s ruining other people’s lives because yer too fucking stupid to figure out how to make yours wor--"

The man headbutts him, aim perfect, the bridge of Steve's nose cracking like an egg shell on impact. Steve's own fault, really. He'd gotten too close. Its his turn to huff out a laugh as he wipes the forming blood away with the blade of his hand. 

"Good hit; but I can do this all day."


End file.
